Source: Press Association, The Age
Plans to run a hotel out of a former home of the von Trapp family immortalized in the The Sound of Music have triggered fierce resistance from neighbors who fear tourists will cause traffic problems and nuisance.

The 125-year-old villa is perched on the outskirts of Salzburg where the 1965 film starring Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer was made.

Wilfried Haslauer, a Salzburg tourism official, announced plans last week to turn the the villa into a hotel.

He said the park surrounding the villa will also be open to the public. He said refreshments and souvenirs will be sold in a pavilion to be built there.

"A tourist attraction like this will make a parking nightmare for all other residents around here," said Andreas Braunbruck, who lives near Villa Trapp. "Nobody talked to us about it -- we were the last to be consulted. We will fight this with all means at our disposal."

He says the area is already teeming with Sound of Music tourists seeking a glimpse of the house. About 40% of all people who visit Salzburg do so because it is associated with the 1965 movie.

But this typical NIMBY (not in my backyard) protest has taken a unique twist according to Allan Hall, Berlin correspondent for Australian newspaper The Age. Locals apparently believe that gay men would, for some reason, be attracted to the tourist Trapp.

Juergen Greiner, a local gay man, told Hall, "Forget this nonsense about parking: they are a conservative lot here and they think gay men are obsessed with The Sound of Music and will bear down on them and bring loose morals to the area. Which wouldn't be a bad thing, if you ask me."

But another resident came closer to the likely appeal of the development when he told Bavaria Radio in Germany: "The thought of busloads of blue-rinse old dears arriving here gives us all the willies."

The movie, and the musical on which it is based, tells the story of an Austrian nun-turned-nanny who cared for a widower's seven children, taught them how to sing and eventually fell in love with him.

The Sound of Music is the ultimate, happy-ending movie -- the Trapp family fled to the US from the Nazi regime, survived, and returned. Their story was successfully embellished in song with Julie Andrews and Christopher Plummer. Those behind the project to refurbish the von Trapp home into a 14-room B&B shrine to the faithful probably thought they couldn't go wrong.

The building, whose refurbishment cost less than $US800,000, also contains elements to appeal to history buffs. Heinrich Himmler, head of the SS during World War II, commandeered the villa for his use and swastikas carved into the furniture can still be seen.

Authorities plan to open the hotel on July 25. Access to the hotel's street will be restricted to public transport so not to clog it with cars and tour buses.

This has done little to mollify protesters, The Age reports. One of them told the Austrian News: "To be honest, I think we're just a little bit sick of The Sound of Music in general. The film was never shown here anyway! I think it's a strange marketing device for a city where Mozart was born -- to push him into second place behind a Hollywood movie as a selling point."

Full article: Hills alive with sound of protest | Press Association
Salzburg alive with the sound of horror | The Age